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In establishing the Six Traits InterActive Writing website, we are trying to create a place where high school English teachers and students can learn and practice Six Trait Writing skills. The descriptors, rubrics and examples have been standard fare in many classrooms for years, but this site allows students to rate pieces of writing and make immediate comparisons with the ratings given by English teachers. It will allow students to move through the lessons at an individual pace and will even allow them to repeat a lesson to fully understand it. Of special interest to teachers will be the ability to view and printout charts which give a profile of an entire classroom's work with the capability of viewing the results as raw numbers or bar graphs.

There would be multiple ways of using this site in the classroom. First, it could be the way to introduce Six Traits by having students move through the levels of descriptors, rubrics and examples focusing on a single trait and its parts or by working through, for example, all the descriptors then moving on to the rubrics and examples.

It would also work well to use these levels as review following classroom discussion.

In either case, the writing samples and rating exercises should provide plenty of practice to reinforce any method of teaching the traits. The classroom profiles will allow the teacher to check for understanding and reteach as necessary.

By following the signup instructions, a teacher may obtain a class accounts. Each class account, or ID, is then shared with students in that class. This allows students to sign up to participate in the exercises that are stored within that class.

For more information about the Six Traits Writing model, follow the links on the main page.